This invention relates to lottery systems for conducting pull-tab and other instant win lottery games and, more particularly, to gaming systems having pull-tab or other instant win lottery games with multiple outcomes being displayed to the players in a single graphical or printed representation.
Various lottery and gaming systems are known for conducting electronic instant win games and other wagering games, and for determining outcomes of wagering games by selecting predetermined outcomes from a finite pool of outcomes for the wagering game. U.S. Pat. No. 5,324,035 to Morris et al. discloses a gaming system including a central game processor, a plurality of master processing units and a plurality of slave terminals operable by players to play the game. The central game processor communicates with the master processing units and supplies the various games available in the system. The master processing units store and administer the games as they are played on the slave terminals connected to each respective master processing unit. A preferred game includes a fixed pool of game plays and a predetermined number of winning plays within each pool. Each player, through his or her slave terminal, can purchase plays in each fixed pool stored in the master processing unit to which that terminal is coupled. When a particular pool is exhausted, for example, through the purchase of all plays, the central game processor provides another fixed pool of plays to that master processing unit to enable continuous play.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,582,324 to Koza et al. discloses a video amusement game terminal for a gaming system for playing a game providing the illusion of skill. A game processor provides a video game presentation in response to player control wherein a prize award is disclosed through presentation of achievement by the player of a designated objective. The presentation provides to the player the illusion that the prize award is determined by player skill in achievement of the designated objective.
As another example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,042,809 to Richardson discloses a computerized gaming device and method of playing casino-type games of chance wherein a player chooses a game to play from a plurality of games displayed on a video screen. Each game has a finite number of chances per deal and a video display of the chances of winning when a deal is new, the percentage of winning chances remaining, the possible winning symbol combinations, and how many major winning chances remain. A displayed record is kept of the player's cash credit with a print out of wins and losses when he quits to claim any winnings. A provision is made to retire a deal or game whenever all the major winning chances have been won or when there are no more winning chances remaining. The player can quit at any time or call for a new deal screen after playing at least one chance in a deal.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,949,042 to Dietz, II, et al. discloses a multiple play gaming ticket, such as a pull-tab ticket or “instant winner” lottery ticket, and a coordinating validation system. In its preferred form, the pull-tab ticket has multiple groups or plays of indicia that each create an independent opportunity to win. To deter fraud, a validation code is provided which uniquely identifies the pull-tab ticket and is not merely a representation of the indicia. The pull-tab ticket is validated by a combination of a validator machine and a host computer. The validator machine reads the validation code and relays it the host computer to check for legitimacy (i.e., proper form and availability) and to correlate it to a stored record of gaming indicia. If approved, the host computer sends its record of gaming indicia back to the validator machine for display on monitor and payout, as appropriate.
As a further example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,024,640 to Walker et al. discloses an off-line remote lottery system that enables players to purchase instant-type lottery game outcomes from a randomized prize datastream in a central computer and view the outcomes on remotely disposed gaming computers that do not require an on-line connection to the central computer during play. The central computer stores identification data for a plurality of gaming computers and is configured for randomly assigning outcomes from the randomized prize datastream to the gaming computers in response to purchase requests by players for a requested number of outcomes in each purchase request. Each gaming computer includes a game program in memory for execution on the gaming computer to generate games that yield the purchased outcomes or aggregate net payoff of the purchased outcomes, and a redemption function for generating a redemption request to cash-out winnings. The system enables outcome purchase and redemption of winnings to be effectuated directly with the central computer over a telephone network, or via a plurality of agent terminals located at various lottery retailers.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,656,040 to Brosnan et al. discloses a gaming machine displaying multiple game outcome presentations to one or more players playing the gaming machine. A player may initiate a new game on the gaming machine while the outcome of a previous game is being presented to the player. For a number of different games, two or more game outcomes may be presented simultaneously to the player on the gaming machine. The game outcome presentations for two or more of the games may appear to interact, but the game outcomes determined by the gaming machine are independent of one another and do not depend on the game outcome presentation. Many different combinations of games may be played simultaneously on the gaming machine.